Christensen Brothers by Sheryl Flatow

“Ballet west of the Mississippi is pretty much By the time he was in his early twenties, Willam the creation of the Christensen brothers – was a highly regarded teacher at the school in Willam, Harold, and Lew,” wrote Arlene Croce Ogden. He really wanted to dance ballet, not in 1980 (“Going to the Dance,” p. 311). teach it, but in the early part of the twentieth Separately and together, with passion and century there were no professional ballet ingenuity, tenacity and perseverance, companies in the United States. So, in 1927, he imagination and talent, the Christensen and Lew hit the vaudeville circuit, and a year brothers helped ballet take root in this country, later they were in New York. They swiftly made and their influence reverberates today. it to the prestigious Orpheum circuit with an act for two couples; one of the women, Mignon Willam (1902-2001), as artistic director, Lee, would become Willam’s wife. Despite the choreographer, and teacher, transformed the inclusion of women, the act was really a fledgling San Francisco Ballet from an showcase for male dancing. “Lew and I had to appendage of San Francisco Opera to an be virtuosos,” Willam said. “We had to turn and independent company, and introduced leap like sons-of-guns, and dance fast to keep countless numbers to classical dance in San audiences interested. Because at that time not Francisco and beyond. He then went on to many people knew what we were doing. Were found the ballet department at the University of we gymnasts? Were we acrobats? But Utah – the first of its kind in the country – and 1 audiences liked us.” to establish Ballet West. Harold (1904-1989) was a gifted teacher who directed San Francisco In 1932, Willam and Mignon left the act. She Ballet School for 33 years, and brought it to had undiagnosed health problems, she was national prominence. Lew (1909-1984) became pregnant, and the couple needed a more stable the first American premier danseur under the lifestyle. They moved to Portland, where Willam guidance of George Balanchine, and later ran the Christensen School and formed a small succeeded Willam as artistic director of San company, Portland Ballet. “That’s where I really Francisco Ballet, guiding the company to even started to choreograph,” he said. “I greater success. experimented and learned.”

Early Years Harold, who had originally chosen West Point The brothers were born in Utah to a Mormon over a ballet career, replaced Willam in the act. family, many of whom were musicians and He had left the military academy after a year dancers. They received their early training from and begun to study ballet in earnest. He also their uncles, who had studied in New York with showed a talent for teaching, and was put to the Italian teacher Stefano Mascagno and went work at both the Ogden and Seattle schools. His on to found schools in Seattle; Portland, teaching would evolve even more after he Oregon; Salt Lake City; and Ogden, Utah. joined Lew in vaudeville. They remained on the Willam, Harold, and Lew would also study with circuit until 1934, when they and their partners Mascagno, first when he visited Utah, and later were cast to dance in a Broadway operetta, The in New York. Great Waltz. With their mornings and

afternoons free, the brothers began attending In the spring of 1938, Willam became the the School of American Ballet, founded in director of San Francisco Opera Ballet. January of that year by George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein. The education they received Among his many accomplishments, perhaps none is more significant than his insistence on under Balanchine’s tutelage would later transform San Francisco Ballet School and San bringing ballet to the people and building audiences. He began giving Francisco Ballet. lecture/demonstrations in San Francisco and all Willam visited New York in 1934, and spent a around the Bay Area, and also organized a brief time studying and performing on group to undertake a West Coast tour. “First we Broadway with Michel Fokine. “I was a little stiff went to cities in Northern California, and then as a dancer when I went to Fokine, because of we began going to places like Portland, Seattle, my Italian training,” he said. “Fokine wanted the Vancouver, and a lot of little towns,” he said. movement to be more lyrical, more plastic, “Eventually the San Francisco Opera Ballet freer. He changed my whole attitude toward came to be quite well known.” dance, and I taught what I learned from him.” The company’s schedule independent of the Building San Francisco Ballet opera began to grow. The repertory was made In 1937, Willam was invited to join the four- up mostly of ballets choreographed by Willam, year-old San Francisco Opera Ballet – as it was encompassing everything from folk ballets— known until 1942 – as a dancer. But Willam had dances that relied heavily on steps and bigger plans. He brought with him to the Bay character movement from Spain, Hungary, Area several of his students from Portland, and Russia, etc.—to contemporary pieces with immediately set up the Oakland branch of San American themes. Although he occasionally Francisco Ballet School. Within weeks of his created abstract ballets, such as Chopinade arrival, San Francisco Ballet presented in (1935) and Bach Suite (1938), he preferred story Oakland an all-Christensen concert, made up of ballets: mythological pieces such as Triumph of three ballets by Willam and one by Lew. Among Hope (1944) and Pyramus and Thisbe (1945), those who appeared on the program were Janet and humorous Viennese confections like In Reed and Jacqueline Martin – two of the Vienna (1938) and Winter Carnival (1942). The dancers who made the move from Portland to latter piece included elements of vaudeville, as San Francisco – and the three brothers did two other humorous works steeped in Christensen, with Lew and Harold appearing as Americana, And Now the Brides (1940) and The guest artists. Audiences, dancers, and critics Nothing Doing Bar (1950). “I tried to present were impressed, and in no time students from balanced programs,” he said. “A little beauty, a the San Francisco branch of the school were little drama or romance in the middle, and a lot flocking to Willam’s classes. of virtuosity at the end.”

“I was a good teacher,” Willam said. “My Willam was also enthralled by the great full- dancers were technically better than the San length classics – although he had never seen Francisco dancers, because my training was them. In 1939, he choreographed San Francisco better. After three or four weeks I was engaged Ballet’s first full-length work, Coppélia, in which to go to San Francisco, and I dropped Oakland.” he played Franz opposite the Swanilda of Janet

Reed, the company’s first prima ballerina. The on 126 roles. It was an overwhelming success, following year he choreographed the first full- and became an annual event in 1949, thus length American production of Swan Lake, and establishing a holiday tradition. Ballet West has in 1944 the first complete version of The danced Willam’s production since 1955. Nutcracker ever seen in this country. There was never much money during the years Lacking intimate familiarity with these ballets, that Willam ran the company, but thanks to his he investigated them as best he could. “I was a dogged persistence, his absolute belief in what good reader, and a great student of music and he was doing, San Francisco Ballet continued to ballet,” he said. “And I must have had a little grow. “If I was concerned about money, there talent, too. I knew the story [of Coppélia,], and wouldn’t have been a San Francisco Ballet,” he by reading the score I was able to choreograph said. “There might be one now, but there Coppélia. I also talked to anybody who had wouldn’t have been one then.” In 1942, when knowledge of the ballet. That’s the same way I the war made it impossible for the Opera to did Swan Lake and Nutcracker.” financially maintain the company, Willam and Harold bought the school for $900. Harold, who Willam had seen the second act of Swan Lake had moved to the West Coast two years earlier, performed by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, was named director and under his leadership, but was unfamiliar with the other three acts. He the school flourished. had no idea that Odette and Odile were played by the same ballerina. So when Swan Lake Lew Christensen, Dancer and Choreographer premiered, Odette was danced by Martin and While Willam was guiding San Francisco Ballet Odile by Reed. (When he later learned of his through its critical formative years, Lew was mistake, he changed it.) Lew made a guest 3,000 miles away in New York, working with appearance as Siegfried. Balanchine. In 1935, when Balanchine was appointed ballet master of the Metropolitan Willam had a bit more familiarity with The Opera, he invited Lew, Harold, and Ruby Nutcracker. He had previously choreographed Asquith (Harold’s partner and future wife) to some of the divertissements from the ballet and join his American Ballet, which had become the was familiar with other scenes thanks to a Metropolitan Opera’s resident ballet company. truncated version he’d seen performed by the Also a member of that company was Ballet Russe. He pieced his production together Caccialanza, who would become Lew’s wife. He from several sources and contributed his own remained with Balanchine through the early choreography. He obtained a copy of the well- years of New York City Ballet and became this notated score from the Library of Congress, and country’s first homegrown danseur noble, Balanchine and Alexandra Danilova shared setting a standard for future generations of their recollections of the Petipa-Ivanov American male dancers. production for the Maryinsky Theatre. “Balanchine was happy to say there was no The ballet premiered on December 24, 1944, male performer outside Russia who could with Gisella Caccialanza as the Sugar Plum Fairy, match him as a danseur noble,” Kirstein wrote Willam as her Cavalier, and Jocelyn Vollmar as in the book Thirty Years: Lincoln Kirstein’s The the Snow Queen. Fewer than 50 dancers took New York City Ballet. He also said, “It was how

Lew danced on stage and behaved off that began taking on increasing responsibilities as a signified to me a future [for ballet in this ballet master. His career was interrupted in country], and within it a potential for American 1942, when he was drafted into the army; when male dancers. . . . In the thirties, he danced the he got out, he became ballet master of the best Apollon Musagete both Balanchine and I newly established Ballet Society, forerunner to have ever seen” (pp. 57, 301). New York City Ballet. But he realized that he would never be in a position of great authority Nancy Johnson, one of San Francisco Ballet’s in a Balanchine company and, looking for more most important dancers in the 1950s, was a challenging artistic opportunities, he joined teenager when she saw Lew dance in Willam’s Willam as co-director of San Francisco Ballet in production of Swan Lake. “He was tall and 1951. extremely handsome,” she said. “He was very American, and that was obvious in his style of Changing of the Guard dancing, in his elongated lines and a more risky Following the 1951 season, Willam left San way of moving: jumping higher, spinning faster. Francisco for Salt Lake City, where he had the His lines were so straight and so long, and the opportunity to establish the ballet department European lines had been sort of Baroque and at the University of Utah. Mignon’s health had rounded and curved and softer. He was one of deteriorated – she had been diagnosed with the first Americans to dance in this new way.” multiple sclerosis – and they were in need of less stress, more permanence, and more In addition to his talent as a dancer, Lew was money; money would remain in short supply at also proving to be a choreographer of San Francisco Ballet for years to come. Harold considerable gifts; Kirstein wrote that he was “a stayed on as head of San Francisco Ballet dance designer of taste, ingenuity, and humor” School, which he ran until his retirement in (p. 301). Those qualities are apparent in Filling 1975. Lew retained the directorship until his Station (1938), one of his most popular and death in 1984, although beginning in 1976 he durable works. Filling Station was shared the title with Michael Smuin. (During commissioned and written by Kirstein for Ballet that period, Smuin’s aesthetic began to Caravan, and is the oldest surviving American dominate the company, and Lew’s influence folk ballet. Danced to an amusing score by Virgil diminished.) Under Lew’s leadership, San Thomson, Filling Station chronicles a day in the Francisco Ballet began to receive national and life of Mac, a gas station attendant, originally international recognition. portrayed by Lew. The ballet is an amiable mixture of classical movements and vaudevillian When Lew took charge of San Francisco Ballet, antics, and is a milestone in American ballet. he was one of the most prominent figures in When Filling Station premiered, ballet classical dance in America. His years with audiences were not accustomed to seeing Balanchine and Kirstein, and his exposure to the ordinary Americans behaving in familiar – if best art and artists – in ballet and beyond – cartoonish – fashion, in such recognizable gave him very different ideas from Willam’s surroundings as a gas station. about what dance could and should be. Even before he had any notion that he would one Lew had numerous opportunities to day direct San Francisco Ballet, Lew began choreograph while in New York, and he also

working with about eight students in the a classical or neo-classical ballet. There were all advanced class at the school, training them in kinds of juxtapositions.” what was essentially Balanchine technique. “[The brothers] were completely different,” said Lew choreographed over 100 ballets in all. Standouts include such plotless pieces as the Johnson. “Mr. C, as we called Bill, was very theatrical, far more theatrical in his approach to charming Four Norwegian Moods (1976); the teaching a dance. With him the expression witty Il Distratto (1967), in which he played with light to create some wonderfully imaginative came first and the steps came after. With Lew, we were all of a sudden exposed to what at that effects; and the marvelously fluid Vivaldi moment was being called abstract dancing, Concerto Grosso (1981), his final work. Among his most acclaimed story ballets are Filling which, of course, was not abstract. They were Station; Jinx (1942), the tale of a clown who is theoretically dances without stories. But the technique, the style, the clarity, the musicality, blamed for the misfortunes befalling a circus; and the line came before any kind of Beauty and the Beast (1958); Original Sin (1961), inspired by the story of Adam and Eve; programmatic material was layered on it. You had to learn the steps first. But he was not and the comic Con Amore (1953), in which, devoid of expression. He told me once that among other things, a short male thief finds himself in a camp of Amazon women. He also every ballet he choreographed he did to teach us something. Each one would be a little more choreographed the first pop art ballet: Life: A Do it Yourself Disaster, premiered in 1965, two difficult than the last one.” years before Robert Joffrey’s Astarte, the ballet The fact that Christensen’s ballets were often a generally cited as the first of that genre. means of teaching his dancers does not mean that his choreography was simple. “The “Each of his ballets was different from the one Christensen ballets hold a provocative secret. before,” said Johnson. “But they were very American in approach. He was very interested They ought to be much better known than they are,” Croce wrote in 1978 (“Going to the in American composers and designers. He liked simplicity and bold movement and bold actions. Dance,” p. 135). And, of course, he was extremely humorous.” Anita Paciotti, who began her career with San Lew’s strong relationship with Balanchine and Francisco Ballet in 1968 and remains there today as a principal character dancer and ballet Kirstein would prove to be especially valuable. mistress, said of Lew, “He wanted something In his inaugural year as sole artistic director of San Francisco Ballet, the company danced its extreme. It wasn’t about being delicate. It was first Balanchine ballet, Serenade. Balanchine about being strong, it was about speed. And it was extremes of movement, from high to low. continued to be extremely generous to San He wanted straight lines, long-reaching lines, Francisco Ballet throughout his life, and the fact that he entrusted his ballets to Lew from the not old-fashioned romantic lines. And it was really important to Lew that his dancers move. start gave the company a certain cachet. He experimented with technique, and did a lot Beyond that, these masterworks challenged the dancers in new ways, strengthening and of quirky things. He’d have you turn in and then turn out, and do combinations of jazzy things in improving their technical skills.

In 1956, Lew led San Francisco Ballet to its first Willam was now eager to take his dancers to engagement at Jacob’s Pillow. Newsweek the next level: he wanted the company to declared that the company had “matured into a become professional. He was aware that the national asset.” Between 1957 and 1959, San Ford Foundation was going to begin funding the Francisco Ballet was sent by the State arts in 1963, and knew that companies affiliated Department on three international tours that with a school would not be eligible for took the company to the Far East, Central and consideration. Although Willam remained on South America, and the Middle East and Africa. the faculty of the University until 1971, his In 1963, there was a national tour that played company became independent from the school. forty-two cities. At the end of the year, the The newly named Utah Civic Ballet received a company was among the first recipients of a Ford Foundation grant of $175,000. In 1968, Ford Foundation grant. New York City Ballet and when the Federation for Rocky Mountain States the School of American Ballet received the bulk chose Utah Civic Ballet to represent the region, of the initial grant money, close to $6 million; the company took on a more inclusive name, San Francisco Ballet was next with $644,000. Ballet West. In 1971, Willam led Ballet West on There is little doubt that Lew’s association with its first European tour. He remained artistic Balanchine and Kirstein worked in the director of the company until his retirement in company’s favor. 1978 (co-directing during his final two years with Bruce Marks, his successor). But he never Ballet Takes Root in Salt Lake City stopped teaching around Salt Lake City, and in When Willam joined the faculty of the 1991, when he was 89, he joined the faculty of University of Utah as an associate professor (he Ballet West Conservatory, where he taught well became a full professor in 1953), it was with the into his nineties. stipulation that the ballet program would not be part of the physical education department, Legacy which was commonly where modern dance “More than anything else, these guys were programs were placed. He wanted ballet to be great teachers,” said Johnson. “And they not recognized as an art form, not a sport. So ballet only developed great dancers, but great joined musical theater as part of the speech teachers. I think that’s largely gone department, and Willam set about developing a unrecognized. All over the country today, there “conservatory-style program modeled upon are people who are carrying on the European ballet academies,” wrote Debra Christensens’ work, or who have learned from Hickenlooper Sowell in The Christensen Brothers people that have carried on their work. They (p. 291). By the end of the second year, he had have had a dramatic effect on American dance.” also created a student performing group. Over A short list of the dancers who received all or the next decade, Utah Theatre Ballet grew more and more polished and proficient. Major guest part of their training from Willam, Harold artists appeared with the company, and all and/or Lew includes Ruby Asquith, Sally Bailey, Richard Carter, Betsy Erickson, Carolyn George, performances were accompanied by the Utah Cynthia Gregory, Finis Jhung, Nancy Johnson, Symphony. Virginia Johnson, Harold Lang, Conrad Ludlow, John McFall, Victoria Morgan, Terry Orr, Janet

Reed, Suki Schorer, Michael Smuin, Kent Sheryl Flatow has written about dance and Stowell, Jocelyn Vollmar, and Onna White. theater for more than 30 years for numerous Many of those who began their careers with national publications. From 1992-2002, she was San Francisco Ballet left to dance in New York. the program annotator for San Francisco Ballet. While some were seeking greater opportunities, At the Museum of Performance & Design in San others left not because they were unhappy on Francisco (then known as the San Francisco the West Coast, but because they could barely Performing Arts Library & Museum), she eke out a living there. curated major exhibitions on George Balanchine, George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers It is not an exaggeration to suggest that Willam, and several others. Under the aegis of MPD, she Lew, and Harold willed the survival of San curated exhibitions on Giselle and Rudolf Francisco Ballet, keeping it going through some Nureyev for San Francisco Ballet, and Paul very tough financial times. Had it not been for Taylor for Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. She their uncompromising commitment to and currently lectures at Florida Atlantic University’s belief in San Francisco Ballet, it is unlikely that Lifelong Learning Society, presenting programs the company would have had the opportunity on musical theatre, movie musicals, and dance. to mature into the world-class institution it has become.

“More than once the company was on the verge of bankruptcy,” Vollmar said, “and Lew and Harold somehow pulled it through even though they were very poorly paid. Willam once said that he and Lew didn’t have sense enough to quit. They didn’t realize they were making history.”

NOTES

1. All quotes not accompanied by citations in the text are drawn from interviews conducted by the author:

Willam Christensen, 1994 and 1996 Nancy Johnson, 1997 Anita Paciotti, 1997 Jocelyn Vollmar, 1997

For full citations to works referenced in this essay, see Selected Resources for Further Research.